Bloomington author favors North Korea

I posted this commentary in response to a letter in the Bloomington paper blaming America for the North Korean problem:

The author said: "Since 1953, the North Korean people have endured privation, hunger and Spartan militarism, to hang tough for the imminent American attack." Mr. Thom shows no understanding of the regime, just a pathological dislike of American policies. In a sense there are no "North Korean people". The "people" only exist to serve the dictator for his personal comfort and safety. To this end, the dictator will abuse, starve and sacrifice millions of his citizens. The son of the previous dictator, he uses Orwellian methods to control the people including state control of media, omnipresent propaganda, arrest of dissidents and a vast prison system of political prisoners. This is the regime Mr. Thom is enamored with and wants to protect from evil America.

A Marine in Afghanistan

Message from a Recon Marine in Afghanistan:
  This young man is  articulate and has a flare for colorful language, and descriptive prose... Scorpions, Chiggers & Sand Fleas/great letter, must read!

From the Sand Pit...

It's freezing here.  I'm sitting on hard cold dirt between rocks and shrubs at  the base of the Hindu Kush Mountains, along the Dar'yoi Pomir River, watching a hole that leads to a tunnel that leads to a cave.  Stake out, my friend, and no  pizza delivery for thousands of miles.

I also glance at  the area around my ass every ten to fifteen seconds to avoid another scorpion  sting.  I've actually given up battling the chiggers and sand fleas, but the  scorpions give a jolt like a cattle prod. Hurts like a bastard.  The antidote  tastes like transmission fluid, but God bless the Marine Corps for the five  vials of it in my pack.

The one truth the Taliban cannot escape is that, believe it or not, they are human beings, which  means they have to eat food and drink water. That requires couriers and that's  where an old bounty hunter like me comes in handy.  I track the couriers, locate  the tunnel entrances and storage facilities, type the info into the handheld,  shoot the coordinates up to the satellite link that tells the air commanders where to drop the hardware.  We bash some heads for a while, then I track and  record the new movement.

It's all about intelligence.  We haven't even brought in the snipers yet. These scurrying rats  have no idea what they're in for.  We are but days away from cutting off supply lines and allowing the eradication to begin.  But you know me, I'm a romantic.   I've said it before and I'll say it again:  This country blows, man.  It's not  even a country.  There are no roads, there's no infrastructure, there's no  government.  This is an inhospitable, rock pit shit hole ruled by eleventh century warring tribes.  There are no jobs here, like we know jobs.

Afghanistan offers  two ways for a man to support his family:  join the opium trade, or join the army.  That's it.  Those are your options.  Oh, I forgot, you can also live in a refugee camp and eat plum-sweetened, crushed beetle paste and squirt mud like a goose with stomach flu, if that's your idea of a party.  But the smell alone of those  'tent cities of the walking dead' is enough to hurl you into the poppy fields to cheerfully scrape bulbs for eighteen hours a day.

I've been living  with these Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Turkmen. and even a couple of Pushtuns, for  over a month-and-a-half now, and this much I can say for sure:  These guys, all  of 'em, are Huns... actual, living Huns... They LIVE to fight.  It's what they do.  It's ALL they do.  They have no respect for anything, not for their families, nor  for each other, nor for themselves.   They claw at one another as a way of life.  They play polo with dead calves and force their five-year-old sons into human cockfights to defend the family honor.  Huns, roaming packs of savage, heartless beasts who feed on each other's barbarism.  Cavemen with AK-47's.  Then again,  maybe I'm just cranky.

I'm freezing my ass off on this stupid hill because my lap warmer is running out of juice, and I can't recharge it until the sun comes up in a few hours. Oh yeah! You like to  write letters, right?  Do me a favor, Bizarre.  Write a letter to CNN and tell Wolf and Anderson and that awful, sneering, pompous Aaron Brown to stop calling  the Taliban 'smart.' They are not smart.  I suggest CNN invest in a dictionary  because the word they are looking for is 'cunning.'  The Taliban are cunning, like jackals, and hyenas, and wolverines.  They are sneaky and ruthless and, when confronted, cowardly. They are hateful, malevolent parasites, who create nothing,  and destroy everything else.  Smart.  Pfft.  Yeah, they're real smart.

They've spent their  entire lives reading only one book (and not a very good one, as books go), and  consider hygiene and indoor plumbing to be products of the devil.  They're still  figuring out how to work a Bic lighter. Talking to a Taliban warrior about  improving his quality of life is like trying to teach an ape how to hold a pen;  eventually he just gets frustrated and sticks you in the eye with it.  OK,  enough.  Snuffle will be up soon, so I have to get back to my hole.  Covering my  tracks in the snow takes a lot of practice, but I'm good at it.

Please, I tell you and my fellow Americans to turn off the TV sets and move on with your lives.  The  story line you are getting from CNN and other news agencies is utter bullshit, and designed not to deliver truth but rather to keep you glued to the screen through the commercials.  We've got this one under control.  The worst thing you  guys can do right now is sit around analyzing what we're doing over here,  because you have no idea what we're doing, and really, you don't want to know.  We are your military, and we are doing what you sent us here to do.

Saucy Jack
Recon Marine in Afghanistan
Semper Fi
"Freedom is not free... but the U.S. Marine Corps  will pay most of your share".

The Holocaust:

I read a theory that if Jews and other civilian victims in Germany and Europe had guns and resisted the Nazis who rounded them up the cost to the Nazis would have been so high they would have had to halt the process. The lengthy and costly fight in the Warsaw ghetto is an example of where victims fought. The Nazis continued to locate and herd victims to the camps even as the Allies were closing in during the late stages of the war. It has been said that the manpower and rail assets used for this hurt the German war effort significantly but were continued nonetheless. It's estimated six million Jews and another six million non-Jews, including many Polish people, perished in these camps.

Details of the camp system and genocide were kept secret even from the German public. At the time of arrest, victims were led to believe they would survive the camp experience. Human nature worked in the Nazi's favor. Imagine a scene where some want to fight the heavily armed SS and Gestapo forces. Others would point out how dangerous this would be and how it would endanger the lives of women, children, elderly and so on. These cooler heads would prevail. After all, why risk death when you have a chance to survive by cooperating? Can we fault civilized people for this reasoning? The diabolical Nazi's held out (false) hope knowing this would occur. Another tactic was to have victims make detailed lists of their personal property, allegedly so they could recover it later. At the camp entrance a large sign stated "Arbieten Macht Frei" (Work will make you free). The Nazis were cruelly clever in these tricks that greatly reduced the victim's resistance.

Today we are accustomed to total news coverage of world events but imagine the plight of civilians and refugees in WWII Europe...No reliable information of what is happening, rumors spreading like wildfire, Official sources spreading lies and propaganda. Imagine yourself, perhaps with a family to care for, trying to find out what is really going on. Should you stay where you are, move, hide or follow others? Where will you find food and shelter? There are stories of small groups leaving their homes and possessions and making their way over arduous and risky territory and through knowledge or luck they found safety. With hindsight we also know many refugees would have been better off staying in their homes. But at the time, they had no way of knowing. When civilization collapses who do you turn to?

Another incident that is not as well known is the murder of 30,000 Polish army officers by the Soviets. WWII started when the Nazis invaded Poland. Prior to this they had made a secret deal with the Soviets so that Russia invaded eastern Poland at the same time. Later, of course Germany reneged and attacked Russia as well. But in the meantime solid evidence has come out that Russia took Polish officers (POWs) and murdered them. Their bodies have been discovered in a Polish forest. Did these victims know what the communists were planning? Were they perhaps led to believe they would be released? These officers, representing some of the best of Polish society, would be viewed by Marxists as bourgeois and a threat to socialism. Communists eliminate this class by eliminating the people in that class.